Days Like Crazy Paving
by celticfox
Summary: The Doctor likes robot dogs, Romantic poets, scarves, and rare first editions. Rose likes the Doctor. AU
1. Chapter 1

_1. How To Leave The Planet_

"I'd run if I were you," said a dry voice behind her. Rose turned, and saw a woman in a green dress offering her hand. "Shall we be off?"

Rose glanced back at the approaching walking shop dummies. "Don't want to hang around here, that's for sure."

The stranger smiled. "Come on then."

They ran, hand in hand.

* * *

"Look, who are you?"

She smiled tightly. "I told you, I'm the Doctor."

"Yeah, but Doctor What?"

The smile stretched tighter. "Just the Doctor."

"Is that supposed to sound impressive?"

She appeared to consider it for a moment. "Yes."

It was weird, but Rose had seen a lot of weird stuff by now and she didn't inquire further.

"Oh, they just want to overthrow the human race and destroy you."

Rose stared, not sure if she was joking or not. She said such weird things, and smiled, and Rose couldn't for the life of her tell when the Doctor was being serious. "No."

"But you're still listening," the Doctor said, and smiled that eccentric smile. She walked a bit further down the pavement, but Rose was suddenly tired of the games.

"No, but really, Doctor," she said. "Tell me. Who are you?"

The Doctor stopped, and turned, and suddenly it was like she was having an out-of-body experience, because she could see herself, a teenager in a hoodie and a fashionably ripped t-shirt, standing in a sunlit lane, so _normal _and _small, _but a few inches away from her feet the ground opened into a bottomless chasm.

Then the moment was gone, and the Doctor smiled a different sort of smile, and said, "I'm an alien. D'you want to see my spaceship?"

* * *

They'd saved the day, and Rose was high on adrenaline. "You were useless in there, you'd be dead if it wasn't for me!"

"Yes," the Doctor said, simply. "I would. Although Mickey helped, a bit."

Rose glanced scornfully at her quivering boyfriend, who'd been overcome by the excitement. "That useless lump?"

The Doctor took a deep breath, and tucked her dark blond hair behind one ear. "I think perhaps... I owe you something."

"S'all right," Rose said cheerfully, and yet she found herself involuntarily taking a step forward.

"I thought perhaps... you might like to come with me?"

_Yes, _Rose thought, _oh yes, yes. _But... she pushed the thought away. "Is it always this dangerous?"

The gleeful smile. "Oh, yes."

"I can't," she said regretfully, giving in to the thought that's been badgering her, going on about responsibility and all that rot. "I've got to go and find my mum, and someone's got to look after the useless lump."

Mickey shot her a glare.

"But you can," said the Doctor, her gleeful grin widening. "You can do all that and come with me, too."

"What?"

The Doctor lent back against the blue wooden box that was so much more on the inside, and said, smugly, "Did I mention it can also travel in time?"

Rose swallowed, her heart full of hope. "Don't think you did, no," she said, treating the Doctor to a grin of her own.

"Don't go," pleaded Mickey.

Rose kissed him quite chastely on the cheek. "Thanks for nothing," she said, and runs through the open TARDIS door, hair streaming behind her. The Doctor grinned at Mickey, and shut the door. There was a sound like a dying hairdryer, and they are gone.

Mickey stood there for a while longer. It was one thing losing your girl to another bloke; but losing her to another girl was just... humiliating. He sighed, and began the long walk back to a perfectly boring life.

* * *

_AN: Some of you may recognize this story. Or perhaps not, I don't exactly have a lot of fameness. Anyway, I'm still not done with the first bit, but I decided to post it anyway in the hope of guilt-tripping myself into completion. If anyone reviews and says they like it, I'll try to continue at maybe a chapter a week. I've already got about 6000 words written but they're mostly out of order, so..._

_Also, a warning. This is like my first T rated story ever. It is going to have some extremely mild femslash, but nothing over K, probably. I'm giving it the T rating because I want to be able to put in as much violence and language as I think is necessary. It's probably going to be a really mild T though. This is presuming anyone actually likes this story, which they probably won't._


	2. Chapter 2

_2. Places to Go_

"So, where would you like to go?" the Doctor asked, standing by the console. She looked tense, nervous, and she sounded like she was reading from a mental script. "This machine isn't just an instant airplane, you know; there's many different worlds out there."

"You mean... there are other aliens?" Rose asked. "Not just your people?"

"Well, yes," the Doctor said, laughing, "though they like to pretend otherwise."

"Take me somewhere... _spectacular_," Rose says wildly, laughing too. "Take me to the ends of the Earth."

"Your wish is my command," she said, and she was off, spinning things and pressing them, moving with a very precise grace. The column went up and down, and there was a bit of creaking, but other than that Rose couldn't tell they were moving at all. She looks around at the interior of the TARDIS. "Bit gothic, isn't it? Kind of gloomy."

"It is, isn't it?" said the Doctor, frowning at the nearest column. "I don't know why I haven't changed it yet. Sentimental, probably. Well, some wallpaper should fix that! We can do it when we get back!" She's so _chirpy, _Rose thought, at least when she's not all tight and nervous. And she's elegant at the same time. How does that work?

The column stopped moving. "Where are we?"

The Doctor smiled and gestured. "See for yourself."

Rose walked out into a brown-paneled room. "Oh," she said, trying not to sound disappointed.

The Doctor laughed at her, and flashed her sonic screwdriver at a panel. Suddenly, part of the wall rose, and she was left staring at the Earth. The Earth as seen from space. It was... glittering, and huge, and _beautiful. _But.. it was also wrong. Something was different. After a moment she realized that what's different was the sun. It was huge, and red, and malevolent. As she watched it flashed orange and swelled up.

"The end of the earth, as commanded," the Doctor told her. "Five billion years in your future."

* * *

"But- they did this on Newsround Extra once, the sun expanding, that takes hundreds of years."

"Oh, the monkey knows something!" the Doctor exclaimed, flipping her hair. "Millions, actually. But it's been _preserved. _By this institution called the National Trust. They put in gravity satellites and things."

Rose filed away the 'monkey' comment for later retaliation and instead peered down at the future Earth. "It looks exactly the same! I thought... you know, the continents shifted and things? Don't they?"

The Doctor was giving her the 'idiot human' look again. "Yes, very good, Rose. They shifted. And the Trust shifted them right back. They wanted the 'classic Earth' look."

"So why today..."

"Money ran out. It always comes down to money, doesn't it?"

Rose looked down upon her ancestral home, a home so... so homey she'd never actually thought of it as home. Her planet. Hers. "How long's it, like, got?" she asked.

The Doctor took a huge pocket watch on a gold chain out of a pocket Rose was sure wasn't big enough to fit it. It looked ordinary enough, but it seemed to have too many hands... and some were moving in different directions... then the Doctor put it away again. "As far as I can recall, about half an our. Then... _boom!" _She demonstrated graphically with big sweeps of her arms what would happen to Rose's planet.

Rose giggled. "Is that why we're here, then? I mean, isn't that what you do? Jump in with your springyness and huge ego to save the Earth?"

"Not this time. This time, I'm just watching."

Rose was thrown. "But... what about the people?"

The Doctor looked up at her with a frown. "Oh, were you worried about that? No need. They're all gone. The place is empty. Like a room full of covert CIA agents."

Rose shook her head. _"What?"_

"Oh, sorry, sort of inside joke. Never mind."

_"Who the hell are you?"_

They turned to see a... a _blue _guy coming toward them?

"That's not very nice," the Doctor said playfully. "Usually, how do you do? is a better greeting." She smiled, and her expression was suddenly astonishingly sweet. The blue dude blushed purple.

"I- I mean- I mean, how did you get here? This is a maximum hospitality zone!" he complained, but it was clear his heart wasn't in it. "I mean, the guests will be here any second! My life is so complicated," he wept.

The Doctor patted him on the back in a slightly more-than-friendly manner. "Aw, don't worry, sir, I'm sure things will be just fine."

"But who are you people?" he moaned.

"We're guests! Look." From the depths of another pocket in her green felt coat the Doctor produced a plastic green wallet and took out a small card from it, which she showed to the blue person. "See? It's all right, see? I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler."

"Oh," he said. "Many apologies."

"No problem," said the Doctor, smiling winsomely again.

"Well, since you're here, we'd better start!" He hurried off.

"We don't really have an invitation, do we?" Rose whispered.

"Of course not! I never get invited to anything, although it doesn't really matter since I just crash the party anyway," the Doctor whispered back. "The paper's slightly psychic. Shows people whatever I want them to see."

"I can see how that could come in handy," Rose whispered.

"It does have its uses, yes."

"That guy's... _blue."_

The Doctor glanced up at her seriously. "Don't freak out on me now, Rose."

"Don't worry, I can deal," Rose said, trying to be calm and cosmopolitan, although she wasn't sure if it was the truth.

She looked at the Doctor, who was, well, _regal _in her green felt and velvet and long hair with braids in. Rose was still wearing her hoodie, and she felt rather... hoodlum, and totally not belonging here.

Then the actual aliens started arriving.

* * *

"They're just so... alien! I mean, you look at them, and... they're alien."

"They are indeed alien," the Doctor agreed seriously. Rose glanced at her, suspecting sarcasm.

"Where're you from?" she asked curiously.

"A long way away, and long ago," the Doctor replied, after a pause, and she smiled at something only she could see.

There was another long silence, and then Rose said, questioning, "They all speak English."

"No, they don't. You just hear it as English. It's a gift of the TARDIS, as those more sentimental than myself would say. The machine translates it for you. Like the Babel fish, in Hitchhiker's Guide. Poor Douglas," she said, reflecting.

Rose thought about this. She wasn't sure she liked it. But she was also quite sure that nothing would be achieved by asking about it.

She looked back at the alien stranger she had trusted blindly. "Who are you, though?"

"I told you. I'm the Doctor."

"What're you called, though, what sort of alien are you?"

She didn't answer, just looked down.

"What planet are you from?"

"It's not like you'd know where it is," she said.

"Where're you from?"

"What does it matter?"

"Tell me who you are!"

The Doctor was getting angry, her small face getting all tight and white and tension was stretching her body like a taut wire, ready to snap. "This is who I am, all right?" she cried. "Right now, here, that's who I am! That's all that matters!"

Rose stared at her.

She sighed, suddenly, all the tension draining. "Look, Rose, does it really matter? Really?"

Rose thought about it, looked out at the Earth, felt like there was some great big choice she was about to make and she didn't even know what the hell it was, much less what was right. She looked at the Doctor's pleading green eyes. She sighed too.

"No," she said quietly, "'spose not."

She looked back at the Earth. Somewhere, her mother was making dinner and worrying. She had to believe that. It had to be true. "I don't think I'm quite ready for all this after all," she muttered morosely.

"Oh, don't worry," the Doctor laughed, "you're brilliant! Perfect! Exactly right!" She went off into mad giggles, which made Rose feel even more depressed than before.

In front of them, looking close enough to touch, the Earth seemed as blue and serene as ever, unaware of its impending doom.

* * *

_"Doctor!" _Rose screamed, pounding on the unmoving door. _"Doctor!"_

"I'm right here!" the muffled voice replied, sounding as panicked as her. "Rose, I'm right here! I'm not going anywhere! I'm here!"

"Don't leave me!"

"I'm not going to! I- oh, _Rassilon."_

The glass was breaking. The bloody, bloody _glass _was _breaking._

"Rose!" The Doctor sounded frightened, and that was really the scariest thing of all.

"I'm here! I'm here! _Now fix it!"_

"Rose, I-" The Doctor paused, took several long deep breaths. "Rose, I'm going to have to go away for a bit, all right? I have to find how to put the shield back. I'll be as fast as I can, ok?"

"Okay," Rose whispered quietly, her voice almost lost under the sound of sunlight piercing through the shield which she supposed wasn't really glass but some kind of force field or something, and why the hell was she thinking about that now-

"Doctor? Doctor?"

She was gone.

* * *

Rose was back in the observation room and all the aliens seemed just as shocked and relieved and frightened all at once as she was, and somehow that made up for the fact that some of them were blue, or had tentacles. She was a bit worried though, as the Doctor and Jabe still hadn't returned.

The doors hissed as they opened. Rose turned to see the Doctor walk in, alone, with a terrible, terrible look on her face. Silently, she walked straight to the abandoned ostrich egg and smashed it open with a violent force that was surprising in such a small person. There was a small black device inside, which she fiddled around with for a bit and then twisted.

There was a buzzing noise, and Cassandra teleported back, sans attendants.

And then Rose got to watch as the Doctor watched the last human die gruesomely right in front of her.

The Doctor's expression never changed.

* * *

"We were all so busy worrying about ourselves, that no one even saw it go."

A small, delicate hand slipped into hers.

"I know the feeling," the Doctor whispered.

"How?" Rose asked. "How can anything possibly compare to this? To losing your entire world?"

The Doctor was a black hole of silence.

Rose turned away, empty, hollow, devoid of all feeling. She began to walk back to the TARDIS, and then suddenly remembered that she was still holding the Doctor's hand. She looked at their joined hands- one large and pink and five-fingered and human, the other slightly smaller and a slightly different shade of pink and not human, but still five-fingered. Perhaps they weren't so different after all. Rose looked at the Doctor, really looked. "You do understand," she said in surprise.

The Doctor gave a special, intense smile, the polar opposite of her wide grin. "How about some chips?"


	3. Perceptions

THE DOCTOR (AS ROSE PERCIEVES)

The Doctor is an alien, a Time Lady, an intergalactic adventurer and a smashing best best friend.

The Doctor looks rather like Annie Hall, or rather, as Rose imagines Annie Hall to look, as she's never actually seen the movie. The Doctor wears a green felt coat and a velvet frock one day, a beige suit and a long white scarf the next. Her hair is long and golden-brown and her face is round and delicate and her eyes are like eternity.

She can drink anyone under the table and she knows Venusian Aikido. She often goes on week-long shopping sprees and appears to have an infinite supply of cash. She buys antiques and Oscar Wilde rare first editions.

She has a soft spot for dogs, Romantic poets, and twenty-first century shopgirls.

* * *

ROSE (AS THE DOCTOR KNOWS)

Rose is human, and young, and fantastic.


	4. Chapter 3

_I KNOW you guys are reading it- would it be so awful to review? I do love reviews :D Thanks to those who have. Here's another chapter for you!

* * *

_

_3. Blast to the Past_

"Well, you've seen the future," the Doctor said brightly. "What about the past?"

"I'm not sure," Rose said musingly, mouth full of chips. They were back on the TARDIS, hanging out on one of the landings of the endless curving metal staircases winding up and up like a double helix. The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading H.G. Wells' _The Time Machine _and stirring a cup of tea with a silver spoon. Rose was balancing on the edge of the railing, feet dangling, hair loose, munching on chips. She was idly wondering what would happen if she overbalanced and went over the side. She had the oddest feeling that she wouldn't be allowed to fall. The Doctor would just look over at her and raise an eyebrow, like, _look what the stupid ape has gone and done now, _and she would just stop and float there in midair, feeling very silly. "Seems to me like you owe me a few explanations."

"Perhaps I do," the Doctor said, putting down her book after first placing an embroidered bookmark into it in order to save the spine. "Well. It's like this. There's a randomizer- chaos-inducing- meta- well, _thingy, _installed into the TARDIS which allows it to go to random destinations. Because of some law named after some boring person whose name I can't recall at the moment, this means we have a high chance of landing somewhere where our unique skills are required, because Time tries to heal itself, and we're part of the immune system, you know? However, I can often persuade the machine to go somewhere _I _want to go, without invading aliens, if I really want a nice beach or something, but really, that's not half as much fun is it?"

"Um," said Rose. "Stupid ape quotient approaching fatal levels. I so totally did not understand that."

The Doctor sighed. She placed her silver spoon down on the metal grating of the floor with an audible _klang! _and took a long gulp of her tea in a rather dashing fashion. "Let me put it like this," she said, putting her teacup back down carefully, "don't you like having adventures?"

Rose couldn't think clearly through the slow, stupid smile threatening to plaster itself all over her face. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled.

"Capital," the Doctor said, and standing up in one fluid motion she tossed her china teacup over the railing. With a sickening feeling Rose listened to the _crash! _that floated up several fractions of a microsecond later. She bent down and carefully pocketed the silver spoon. "Sentimental value," she said as she straightened up. "Now, how about the past?"

* * *

"But I don't understand," Rose asked plaintively as the Doctor swiftly pulled racks of clothing here and there. They seemed to be on rails on the ceiling or something. "I thought you said it was random where we went," she continued, pushing a bright purple feather boa out of her face.

"Indeed," the Doctor answered, examining a long sweeping ball gown before shoving it away. "The best part of travel is choosing your outfit, don't you agree?" she said, apparently rhetorically. "It's random, but I do have _some _degree of control, when I so choose, and right now I choose to go somewhere on your planet in the last one thousand years before your time. (Any further and it all gets rather unpleasant and harder to pass off the TARDIS as indigenous.) It's a shame we have to wear dresses; I think this incarnation is rather partial to cross dressing. Well! I think what we're looking for is a practical combination of style and functionality, don't you agree?"

Rose wasn't listening. She was staring at a long, sweeping white dress, fit for some alien dignitary, simple yet stunning. "Oooh," she whispered.

"Totally wrong time period," the Doctor said, snatching it away. However she also stared at it for some time. "Oh, this brings back memories," she said softly. "Used to belong to... a friend of mine. Long ago," she said, her voice wistful and far away. Then she forced it back into anonymity between an orange swimsuit and a purple air hostess uniform and went racing away, forcing Rose to run to catch up. She went briskly down the rows, muttering, "Good grief, this really needs to be better organized.... ah, here we are!"

Rose went wide-eyed with awe. She was six again, and trying on a princess dress her mother had bought her for five dollars at the secondhand shop because Jackie Tyler couldn't sew if her life depended on it but she did recognize the need for a little girl to be a princess. The hum of the radiator was a barely-noticed background noise as she swirled the trailing hem to and fro, pulling a headband over her forehead as a crown and imagining all the knights bowing and kissing her hand and saying, _your royal highness..._

"Rose?"

"It's gorgeous," she said. "Is it really... can I really wear it?"

"It's yours," the Doctor replied in an amused tone, and then was knocked off her feet by an extremely enthusiastic hug. "Oh! Ooof! Get off me, you stupid ape," she laughed.

"Oh, I can't believe it!" Rose cried, taking the dress off the hanger and dancing around with it.

"Just be in the console room, ready to go in ten minutes, okay?" the Doctor commanded, still laughing, and disappeared among the ranks of other people's clothing.

* * *

"This," Rose said, stunned, "is the past. Really the past."

"Yes," the Doctor giggled.

Cautiously Rose extended an elegantly clad foot outside the TARDIS, then snatched it back in. "I'm not gonna... age a hundred years or somethin if I touch the ground am I?"

"Where'd you get that from?" the Doctor laughed.

Rose shrugged, feeling silly. "Some Irish myffs I read once, I suppose. Okay then, here goes." Holding her breath, she placed her foot down in the snow. It crunched. She exhaled, and stepped fully out of the transdimensional wooden box.

"I don't know, it's just... more real, y'know, the whole time travel fing?" Rose said. "I mean... this is the past. Really."

"Oh for god's sake, I thought we'd gotten past all that," the Doctor said irritably, and swiftly went down the lane, forcing Rose to run to catch up, all the time trying not to trip in her elegant yet impractical footwear.

* * *

"So where exactly are we?"

The Doctor pulled out that strange watch again. "1869, Cardiff, Christmas Eve." She wrinkled her nose. _"Cardiff? _Can't be very tasteful alien invaders, then."

* * *

Rose smiled encouragingly at Gwyneth. People from the past really weren't so different. It was a strangely reassuring thought.

"And you have come such a long way," Gwyneth said, and suddenly she did actually seem different. Weird, even.

"What makes you say that?" Rose asked, disconcerted.

"You're from London. I have seen London in drawings, but never like that. All those people rushing about, half naked for shame." If it hadn't been so weird, Rose would have laughed at the nineteenth-century propriety. "And the noise, and the metal boxes racing past, and the birds in the sky- no, no they are metal as well. Metal birds with people in them, people are flying." Gwyneth's voice was full of awe. Then she looked back at Rose. "And you, you have flown so far, further than any one. The things you've seen- The Darkness." She looked past Rose, at something Rose couldn't see, and looked terribly, awfully frightened.

"What is it, what's wrong?" Rose cried in alarm.

"There is something on your back."

* * *

_Different morality._

"Fuck this," Rose muttered.

She hadn't expected this. People dying. It wasn't what she'd signed up for.

"Take me home," she demanded as soon as the Doctor was done saying goodbye to Charles Dickens. Or rather, she began to say it, but somehow the words died in her throat as she saw the Doctor's face.

"Not what I expected either," the Doctor said shakily.

Rose started to remember other things- the Gelth had mentioned something about a War, and so had the Nestene Consciousness and Jabe- but she was only a stupid shopgirl, and how was she supposed to understand an alien?

"Do you want to go home?" the Doctor asked wearily.

She wasn't so sure, any more. She wasn't so sure of anything. "Just for a bit," she said. "To check on Mum. After that- we'll see."

_There is something on your back._


	5. Chapter 4

_Sorry for the long wait, everyone, real life was keeping me busy. But here's another chapter now.  


* * *

Home Again, Home Again_

* * *

"And could you pop out out to the shops, dear? We've run out of milk."

"Course, mum," Rose groaned, trying to ignore the grin she _knew _was plastered all over the Doctor's face. The ceiling fan hummed, and out in the distance she could hear Londoners going about their lives, all beneath the pervasive noise of the telly and her mother chopping vegetables. Chop chop chop, decapitating the green beans with deadly precision. This was it. The dim and dreary reality of her nineteen years of life.

"So who exactly is this mystery guest?" Jackie said, coming into the living room holding a tray with mugs of tea. "Seems too posh to be hangin' out with you an' Shareen."

_"Mum," _Rose said, out of habit, almost fondly.

"So come on, then, tell us!"

"This is the Doctor, Mum. She's, umm, a foreign exchange student." She made the mistake of glancing at the Doctor's face, and immediately regretted it. The alien had a twinkle in her eyes that Rose already knew meant trouble.

"She don't sound foreign, she sounds British," Jackie said with her regrettably persistent London logic.

The Doctor opened her mouth and Rose closed her eyes in anticipation of some far-fetched tongue-in-cheek tale that was probably hilarious on the Doctor's home planet that would have Jackie thinking she was more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic. So she was surprised to hear the Doctor say, in a perfectly calm and polite and, yes, posh kind of voice, "Well, I did live in Sheffield for a few years when I was growing up, and you pick the accent back up pretty quickly, you know?"

"Hmmph," Jackie said. "Where're you from then?"

"Well, usually I live in India, but right now I'm studying at Oxford."

"Here, have your tea, dear."

"Why, thank you. I can never get good British tea at home."

Rose opened her eyes in shock. The Doctor was sipping Jackie's tea and barely grimacing at all. Jackie was talking to her like she was one of her mates.

"So what's a posh girl like you doin' with my Rose, then?" she asked, but her tone was warm and friendly.

_"Mu-um," _Rose moaned.

"Well, actually Rose saved my life."

Rose thought perhaps this was all some fiendish plan to make her die of a heart attack.

_"No," _Jackie gasped.

"It's true. I was wandering around in the middle of the street like an idiot looking for the Tower of London, and she pulled me out of the way of those frightful red buses you people have."

Oh, Rose thought to herself quietly, and looked sideways at her mother. Jackie was staring at her tea. Rose stood up. "Anyone want some more sugar?"  
"Oh- yes please," the Doctor said ruefully, looking down at her mug.

"Come in and get it then, I don't know how much you want," and she dragged her friend into the kitchen.

"Rose, what-"

"Look," she said in an undertone, "don't talk about people getting hit by cars around Mum, okay?"

"Why?"

God, Rose thought, she's so clueless. "My dad," she said simply.

The Doctor blinked. "Oh."

"Here's your sugar. How many spoonfuls?"

"However many you deem necessary," the Doctor replied in a faraway voice. Rose dumped half the bowl in, as revenge and to see if the alien would even notice. And now she's going to treat Mum like porcelain, she thought.

When Rose went back in she found the two of them in deep discussion of the relative hotness of various American film stars.

"Rose," Jackie said abruptly, "why don't we invite some of your mates over, to meet your new friend?"

"Um," Rose said.

"I think that would be splendid!" the Doctor exclaimed, clasping her hands together.

"That's settled then!"

Definitely a fiendish plot. Possibly alien. She must mention it to the Doctor, after she was finished killing her.

* * *

"Look," Mickey said, "you alright?"

"Sure, why wouldn't I be," she replied brusquely, trying to step by him.

"Well, you just went swanning off with an alien, for one thing, and who knows what sort of crazy stuff you've done, but it's not just that. I've known you since you were born, Rose, and I know when something's wrong. Is it the Doctor?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." She knew she was about to start crying and she hated herself for it. She didn't want to be talking about this, particularly not with ordinary, reliable, sweet Mickey.

There was a sudden roar of laughter from the table, Shareen having come to the end of some outrageously explicit anecdote. She couldn't stand this any more. "I'll see you later," she muttered and stepped outside onto the catwalk, shutting the door in his face. Sighing in frustration, she walked along until she came to a dark and desolate doorway and sat down in it, feeling cold and miserable.

"Your friend is very... adventurous," a wondering voice said out of the shadows.

Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. "Doctor! What are you doing out here?"

"You're very lucky to have so many people who love you," the Doctor continued as though Rose hadn't said anything.

And what do I say to that, Rose wondered. "Come on," she said. "Let's go and sit on the roof."

"I'm guessing they haven't got mothers on your planet," she said, staring out at the myriad lights of London. She remembered, suddenly, all the times she'd come up here as a preteen and teenager, trying to escape from the dull monotony of daily life. She had stared out at that sea of lights and it had been easy to pretend she was somewhere else, somewhere strange and exotic. Now, it all seemed so _small. _She'd gotten a taste of something larger, and now she wanted more. _You can never go home again, _she thought wryly to herself.

"No, not really," the Doctor replied, and something made Rose look away from that twinkling ocean and instead gaze upon the girl sitting next to her, and it was all very strange, because in the half-light, tousled a little by the cool breeze, the Doctor seemed more human than she'd ever been but stranger than ever, too. Her eyes were very wide and dark and infinitely deep. And somehow Rose found herself reaching out and taking the Doctor's hand in hers. Their fingers twined together, long and cool and warm and alien and human and Rose wondered what she was getting herself into, going off with someone she really didn't know at all, and there was a creeping doubt at the back of her mind that nineteen was far too young to make such huge decisions, and this was a bigger decision than she would ever make ever, probably, but her hand squeezed tighter and really, she couldn't bring herself to feel sorry about it at all.

* * *

"Mum, you'll never guess what's happened," Rose said the next day.

"Don't tell me," said Jackie, "Shareen's bi."

Rose blinked. "Um. No. Not as far as I know anyway. No, actually, the Doctor here was going traveling around Europe for a bit longer, seeing the sights, Paris an' stuff, and she invited me along."

"Oh," Jackie said.

"I'll just go get some, um, more tea," the Doctor said quickly, and disappeared.

Rose looked gently at her mother. "Look, Mum, I have to grow up sometime."

"I know," Jackie sniffled.

"And this is a brilliant opportunity-"

"Yeah."

"I mean, I know I'm not much of anything, never got my A-levels- this is a chance for me to do something with myself."

"Course."

"Oh, Mum." Rose threw her arms around the older woman. "If you don't want me to go then I won't."

"No," Jackie said in a thick voice. "No, you're right, it is a good thing. I'll miss you, that's all."

"Oh, Mum," Rose said again, and then she let go. "I'll bring you back loads of souvenirs and things."

"Don't go spending a fortune," Jackie scolded, sounding almost like her usual self. More seriously, she continued, "And remember to call me."

"I will," Rose swore.

And then they were just standing there feeling awkward.

"I remember once, when you were nine or so, you tried to run away to join the circus," Jackie said abruptly. "We had to call the police on you. You said you were going to be a trapeze artist."

"I'll miss you, Mum," Rose said, and went into the kitchen to find the Doctor.

* * *

"Don't go," Mickey pleaded. Rose remembered suddenly that he'd said the exact same thing a few days ago. She was currently finding it rather difficult to meet his eyes. Good old Mickey. Reliable Mickey. His crush on her had been common knowledge around the council estate from the time she was seven and he was eleven, and after Jimmy Stones had left her penniless and disillusioned he'd been there for her. Good old Mickey. She was uncomfortably aware that just because one was only nineteen was no excuse to act immature. She thought of all the chick flicks she'd sat through with Shareen, all the cheesy awful lines she could say: you deserve better, it was never meant to be, it's me not you- they all sounded quite awful and hurtful in her ears.

Instead she said, "I hope you find someone nice."

She left then, conscious that she had made a decision and that it had probably been the right one, or at least righter than some of the alternatives.

* * *

The Doctor was waiting for her in the TARDIS, perched on the arm of a huge Victorian upholstered chair, looking birdlike and delicate. As soon as Rose came in she leapt gracefully down, landing lightly on bare feet. Rose had noticed that she never wore slippers, even in the mornings when the flagstones of the floor were freezing cold.

"I was starting to think you weren't coming," she said, and there was a strange note to her voice that made Rose want wrap her arms around her friend but she knew she would never dare, not yet.

"You're very silly then," she said.

The Doctor grinned. It started out as the wide, somewhat mischievous grin, then slowly transformed into the special, intense smile. "Got something for you," she said.

Rose blinked. "Um. Really?"

The Doctor reached into one of the multitudinous pockets sewn into her green velvet suit-jacket and pulled out something small and metal on a chain, which she with some ceremony lowered into Rose's outstretched palm. Rose looked down. It was an exact replica of the key the Doctor used to open the TARDIS and most things inside it. "Oh," Rose breathed. An ordinary key, really, to look at, but to Rose, it was sort of like having a little bit of the universe in your palm.

She looked back up at the Doctor. The alien was looking hopeful and vulnerable too, like she was afraid of Rose's reaction. Rose felt a smile creeping across her face. "Thank you," she said, and the words seemed to have more meaning than usual, like they were being said in another language.

She knew, suddenly and with the deepest, most unshakeable conviction, that for once in her life her decision had been absolutely, totally correct.


	6. Lists

_Aaagh, another chapter! I really should have posted it earlier, as it's been sitting on my hard drive for a while now... anyway, I'm on vacation in Europe and it has been going brilliantly! Expect the Doctor and Rose to visit Prague at some point 3 Oh yeah, and all you people who are favoriting this but not reviewing? ...um, shame on you._

_Also, the observant among you may notice which episode comes next... yes, folks, this is where we start to earn the T rating.

* * *

_

_

* * *

Lists  
_

* * *

SHOPPING LIST

-milk (1 gallon skim, 1 2%)

-1 actinic-spacial sequencer

-5 integrated phase generating coils

-Popcorn

-warmer sweater

-parts for a transposing molecular occifractor

-hairspray

-20,000 hermit crabs

* * *

_Hermit crabs, Doctor? -R_

_Yes, I need them. -Dr._

_I am not going to ask what for. -R

* * *

_

LIST CONTINUED

-a beta-magnetic accelerator

-more duct tape

-lightbulbs

* * *

Dear Rose,

Good morning! Breakfast is on the table. Don't worry- it hasn't spoiled. Food doesn't spoil in _my _timeship. I've just gone out to do a little exploring. Don't worry till 1:30 or abouts. Then feel free to worry as much as you wish, dear girl, and please come and emancipate me.

* * *

Dear Doctor,

Getting nearly fatally poisoned by homicidal plants is, I am sure, a regular hazard of 'a little exploring'. Well, screw you. Who do you think you are, telling me not to worry my little ape head over your high and mighty self and then coming back looking like _that _and collapsing at my feet? Screw this. The scanner thingy said you'd be in perfect health when you woke up in the morning so this is goodbye. I'm leaving.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too."

"Outside that door lies the Second Roman Empire. Want to do a little exploring?"

"Always this dangerous?"

"Oh yeah."

"Count me in."

* * *

Dear Rose,

Happy birthday. I hope you like this, I've never tried cooking before. Should it be that black color?

* * *

Rose, I've gone out to buy some hermit crabs. -Dr.

* * *

We came, we saw, we kicked evil flesheating crab ass! -R

Veni vidi vici, etc. -Dr.

* * *

Memo to self: (in Gallifreyan)- This is getting stupid. Take her home.


	7. Barcelona

_I am not dead! I just have had mono. For two and a half months. Which is why I sort of abandoned y'all. I'M SORRY! Here, have a mini-ficlet to make up for it!

* * *

_

"So on Barcelona," the Doctor explained, "the dogs have no noses."

"No noses," Rose repeated in disbelief.

"That's right. They have dogs with no noses. Also very good breakfast pastries."

"Well what are we waiting for then," Rose said, and slung on the long bright blue raincoat the grateful locals had given her on Agora. She raced out the door into bright sunlight slanting down through extremely tall and cobbled-together looking buildings linked by bridges. Sticking her head back through the door, she called, "Well come on then!"

"Don't be so impatient," the Doctor admonished, but she smiled.

* * *

It was too good to last, really.

Should have known that.

* * *

_And a sneak preview of the next chapter:_

"Rose, get out of the way," says a voice as cold as space. She turns, and sees the Doctor pointing a gun at her in a very determined manner. Her eyes are hard as diamond, with absolutely no expression in them.

"But it's changed!" Rose cries. "Look at it! All it wants is sunlight! And what about you, Doctor? What're you changing into?"

"Get out of the way."

And suddenly she is sure, absolutely and completely sure that this is _wrong. _She moves protectively in front of the Dalek. "No," she says, with as much resolve as she can muster.


	8. Chapter 5

_So, I am finally Properly Not Dead! The last section of this chapter was actually the first thing I ever wrote for this 'verse; I wrote it _years _ago, and hadn't a clue where it had come from or why. Oh, and I've begun to switch around tenses. I'm really sorry about this but I don't know how else to create the proper effect. The ideas in my head are so big and then when I type them out they come out so messy. I'm sorry._

_Oh, and this episode is rather more T-rated than most.

* * *

_

_5. Our Relationship Has Problems  
_

It's been two months since Rose signed up for this adventure, and she's almost used to the way the TARDIS throws itself around during flight. She enjoys it a bit, actually, though she'll never let on to the Doctor; it's how an adventurer's vessel ought to behave. And she's finally learned to grab for something so she doesn't scrape her knees and elbows on the grid as she's flung across the console.

The Doctor pulls a lever with a decisive jerk, and the TARDIS immediately flips sideways. Rose screams as her arms are pulled so hard it feels they'll come out of their sockets. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the Doctor falling towards her, and then there's the dull thud of collision. The TARDIS decides to revert to normal gravity and slams into the ground with a self-satisfied booming. Rose lets out her breath. The warm grid of the floor presses into her back through her cotton sweater, and her limbs are all tangled among long arms and silk clad legs, and soft wisps of chestnut hair lie feather-light across her cheek. The Doctor is giggling into her ear, warm breath tickling her skin. Rose relaxes, laughter bubbling out of her chest. Her arms still hurt, but it doesn't seem to matter that much.

"I guess we've arrived then," she says after a while.

"Uh huh," the Doctor says. She pushes herself to her knees, dusting off the shoulders of her embroidered silk waistcoat. "I'm pretty sure the TARDIS followed the distress signal. It may be temperamental machine but it always gets there in the end."

"Yeah," Rose says contentedly.

"Well then, let's have a look, shall we?" the Doctor says, bounding to her feet and striding to the door. Rose stares after her for a moment, feeling blank, before she shakes her head in confusion and follows. She wishes the Doctor had given her a hand up. All this adventuring is putting a strain on her back.

"It looks like a museum," she says a minute later.

"A museum of alien bits," the Doctor says, like one might say "dissected puppies".

"Bits of alien stuff?" Rose asks nervously. "Or bits of.."

"Aliens," the Doctor finishes grimly. "Oh, there's technology too, and quite a few absolutely useless pieces of space junk thrown in. Whoever owns this place has no idea what this stuff is."

"Wait," Rose says, a tingling feeling creeping up her spine. "If this person is collecting aliens, aren't you Exhibit A?"

Which is when the scary guys in black uniforms and tinted helmets choose to make an appearance, guns pointed straight at them.

"Why did you have to say that," the Doctor sighs.

* * *

"You're the prettiest alien we've ever seen," Van Statten says. His men snicker. "You'll make our collection so much nicer."

"Thank you," the Doctor says quietly. Her head is high but she is very pale, and Rose can see her shaking hands, clenched in the corners of her shirtsleeves.

"No-" Rose shouts, "no, NO-"

They drag her away. The Doctor doesn't look at her. Rose's last view is of her handing over her wrists to be cuffed as regally as a queen blessing a child. Then the doors slam shut.

* * *

"We get all kinds of stuff here," Adam tells her. "It's really cool."

"What do you do to live aliens," Rose asks, her voice remarkable steady. All she can see are those shaking hands.

Adam looks up. His eyes are shuttered, closed. "Perhaps it would be best if you forgot your friend. There's nothing you can do about it, after all."

Rose stares at him. She hopes her eyes burn with hatred. She's never tried before. He looks scared, though, so maybe she succeeded.

* * *

Rose has always hated aquariums. She's read somewhere that marine mammals die very young in captivity, and the looks on the animals' faces have always seemed to her like very sad prisoners who know they're dying. To her, the metal creature is just another whale mournfully singing its dying dirge.

So she touches it. She isn't even thinking at all about the Doctor in that moment. It's an instinctive reaction, made out of pity and sympathy.

That doesn't matter at all, doesn't mitigate in her favor in the slightest. It doesn't alter the fact that she is responsible for the deaths of hundreds. For the shattering of her own small dreams.

* * *

"Rose, get out of the way," says a voice as cold as space. She turns, and sees the Doctor pointing a gun at her in a very determined manner. Her eyes are hard as diamond, with absolutely no expression in them.

"But it's changed!" Rose cries. "Look at it! All it wants is sunlight! And what about you, Doctor? What're you changing into?"

"Get out of the way."

And suddenly she is sure, absolutely and completely sure that this is _wrong. _She moves protectively in front of the Dalek. "No," she says, with as much resolve as she can muster.

"Get out of the way, Rose!"

"Or what? You'll shoot me?"

And all the color seems to drain out of the world as her alien best friend answers in a shaking voice, "Yes."

The floor sways under her feet. "You're bluffing."

"I'm not. I'll give you three seconds to move. Three. Two. One."

Rose's nerve breaks, and she throws herself to the side.

"Zero."

The dalek is enveloped in the fireball. It screams, briefly, and then is silent.

Rose turns away, feeling sick.

She feels a hand on her shoulder, hears a rough female voice start "Ro-"

She hauls around and slaps her, with a strength she didn't know she had. Then she turns and walks away, as fast as she can without running. There is quite a lot going through her head at the moment, and it's getting jumbled up- stupid little ape, different morality, I may be human but that doesn't mean I'm lesser, I want to- want to- go _home-_

-and then the austere and dignified Time Lady is throwing her arms around Rose's neck and sobbing. It's a rather startling experience. She smells like old books and wild blackberries. "I'm sorry, Rose, I'm so sorry," she says, "I just- please, _please _understand, I _had _to, they killed my family and my friends and my lovers and I had to- please don't go, please!"

And Rose realizes she can't, and never will be able to. And the Doctor knows this, now.

She is very afraid.


	9. Chapter 6

_Say Hi to Captain Jack, everyone!  
_

_

* * *

_

_6. Zombies, Mummies and Other Things To Avoid  
_

"Hmm," the Doctor said, shaking a small humming device.

Rose grinned. "You're doing a scan for alien tech? That's so... Spock!"

The Doctor glanced over. Rose was grinning, relaxed, her face lit up. It was good to see her so happy, after their last adventure. The Doctor felt a smile creeping across her own face. "Is that a good thing?"

Rose tilted her head to one side, tongue curled in her mouth, pondering. "Yep," she said finally, popping the p. "Very cool."

"I'm glad," the Doctor replied, giving in to the smile. Just then her scanner beeped. "Aha!" she said. "A very concentrated batch of stuff totally inimical to this time zone is hanging around..." She shook the thing again. _"Big Ben? _That can't be right."

"That's a bit flash, isn't it?" Rose asked. "Won't someone have noticed?"

"Particularly in early 1941 in London," the Doctor said, looking up. "Everyone must be on the alert for strange things in the sky."

"Why, what's going on?" Rose asked.

The Doctor shook her head sadly. "Rose, you are a most admirable companion, but I find your lack of knowledge of rudimentary history alarming... it's the middle of the London Blitz."

"Oh," Rose said, the smile dropping off her face. Immediately the Doctor felt strangely guilty, for some reason. After they had got this sorted out, she swore silently, they were going to a beach. A proper vacation. Not a stupid Earth beach either; an amazing, unusual, alien beach, one with frozen waves, or mermaids, or green sunsets. She would make it up to Rose. They would be happy again. They had to be.

"Well," she said aloud, to distract herself, "I suppose we _could _climb up to the top of Big Ben... but that seems like so much work."

"Remember that planet of the endless stairs?" Rose said vaguely, but her heart wasn't in it. Her eyes were blank and empty.

Right, the Doctor decided. That's enough of that. "Tell you what," she said with as much cheer as she can muster, "I dare say we've got some time to kill. Doesn't seem to be urgent, whatever it is, seeing as London's still here. Why don't we go have some fun?"

"Yeah, sure," Rose said quietly.

"But you should probably go pick out a different shirt. Don't want to look like target practice, do we?"

Rose glanced down at the Union Jack shirt. "Huh." She smiled up at the Doctor, and it was a real smile this time, which did strange things to the Doctor's hearts. On instinct, she reached out and took Rose's hand. Nervously, she looked up at Rose.

Gently, Rose squeezed her hand. "Doctor," she said, "stop blaming yourself."

"How did you know I-"

"'Cause that's what you _always _do, and it's getting boring. So stop."

"All right," the Doctor said, and grinned.

* * *

_"You must remember this  
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.  
The fundamental things apply  
As time goes by._

_ And when two lovers woo  
They still say, "I love you."  
On that you can rely  
No matter what the future brings  
As time goes by."_

"Bravo!" the Doctor exclaimed, clapping enthusiastically. The torch singer smiled down shyly at her, and stepped down off the stage to a storm of applause. The Doctor grinned at her. "Beautiful," she said quietly.

"Oh- thank you," the singer replied. The Doctor handed her a glass of wine, which she accepted with another smile. "And what is the name of my benefactor?" she inquired teasingly.

"Well, I'm the Doctor, and my friend is Rose," the Doctor told her.

"What friend?" the singer asked, confused.

The Doctor looked around. "What- oh, dear. I'm afraid I'll have to ask to be excused. I'm supposed to look after her. Can't have her wandering off."

"Will you be back?" the singer asked.

"Probably not," the Doctor admitted ruefully. "Well, it was lovely meeting you."

"You too, Doctor," she said sadly, and sipped from her wine as the Time Lady disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

"So when you say 'partner'," Jack asked flirtatiously, "just how disappointed should I be?"

"Oh," Rose said, and felt herself flush red. "It's not- she's a girl."

"...so?" Jack asked.

* * *

Rose had expected... well, she wasn't sure just what she had expected. But she certainly had not expected this.

"That's a very big sonic blaster you've got there," the Doctor said as they ran around the corner, away from creepy gas-mask zombies. Her slinky red dress had proved impractical, so she'd cut a long slit up it going all the way to her knee, and ditched the high heels. "But don't all the... special features drain the battery? My sonic screwdriver has much more... stamina."

"And it's very nicely shaped, too, I see," Jack said appreciatively, hauling them around a corner.

"Thank you," the Doctor said graciously. "You know, it's also very... adaptable."

Rose considered loudly coughing, but just then they discovered a horde of zombies had appeared in the corridor in front of them, so she was rather cut off.

* * *

"He's like you, a bit," Rose muttered, spinning the wheelchair back and forth. "No wonder you two get on so well."

The Doctor paused. Put down her sonic screwdriver. "I don't like him," she confessed.

"Why not?" Rose asked, surprised.

"Our friend Jack," the Doctor told her, "is a wild card. An unknown variable. Do me a favor, Rose, and don't get too fond of him?"

"'Course," Rose said, a bit offended. "I'm not _that _trusting and naïve, you know."

The Doctor turned and looked at her, a half smile playing around her lips. "I know," she said.

* * *

"Doctor," Rose said quietly.

"Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, _everybody lives! _Why don't I ever get more days like this? Come on, isn't it _brilliant?"_

"Doctor," Rose said, "What about Jack?"

* * *

"Welcome to the TARDIS, Captain Harkness," the Doctor announced in a grandiose way, sweeping off her top hat.

"Much bigger on the inside," Jack commented.

"As the priest said to the nun," the Doctor told him seriously, "_don't touch anything._"

Rose smiled, and took his hand. And they danced.


	10. Dance in the Dark

_I really wasn't expecting such an enthusiastic reaction to the last chapter! So I posted the next bit. Unfortunately this now leaves me without a chapter in reserve, which is scary, but oh well.  


* * *

  
_

Jack. Captain Jack Harkness. It's a good name. He thinks he'll keep it for now. He has a good feeling, really, about this whole thing. One frankly _magnificent _ship, two _stunning _traveling companions, and hey, he's a hero now. Saved the Earth. How crazy is that.

The magnificent ship sings to him, at the back of his mind, a song of silver leaves rustling in the wind. Listening to that distant song, he can almost forget the hollowness inside his head.

* * *

He woke up in the middle of the night, shaking from a dream he couldn't remember. It was gone. Snatched away like a ghost. Shivering, he pulled on a perfectly-fitting sweater from the magic wardrobe in his room and stumbled out in search of coffee or something. There was a working kitchen several corridors away, with, surprising and charming him, several anachronistic appliances that looked rather circa 2000 A.D. There was also instant coffee, to his relief. After a few mistakes with the 'microwave' he managed to get something drinkable and somehow found himself wandering the interior of the impossible vessel. He wasn't sure if he liked it just yet. The corridors had high, arched ceilings supported by arches built into the walls at regular intervals- somewhat Space Gothic, with much grating and chrome and tiny winking lights turning the darkness different colors. There was also the faintest sensation of something _out there, _something... feral, and growling. He gripped his mug tightly and for the first time wondered just what he'd gotten himself into.

Somehow he ended up in some vast room with stone walls. Medieval stone staircases led down onto the main floor, which was full of stone arches, illuminated by glass chandeliers hanging from the domed ceiling. In the middle was a huge stone hemisphere. He went out onto the top of one of the staircases and shivered. The room felt... dead.

"Ad perpetuam rei memoriam," said a soft, clear voice behind him, and then said something in a dry, dusty language he'd never heard before. "For the perpetual remembrance of the thing. So that I do not... forget. This is the Cloister room."

He turned, and saw the Doctor gliding towards him without making a sound. She was still wearing that red dress with the slits in it, and she was looking at him with an ironical expression. God, she had such nice legs. What was it about him that attracted sexy aliens?

But though this internal monologue continued, as automatic as breathing, a little voice in his head was screaming that something was wrong, very wrong....

"What is it?" he asked. And, without knowing quite why, "How did it die?"

She smiled wryly. "A link, that's what it is. A link to something long since turned to dust."

He watched her for a while without saying anything. She moved forward next to him and leant over the railing, staring down at what looked to him like the closed lids of a giant eye. Finally he commented, "Rose hasn't been down here, has she?"

The Doctor turned to look at him. In the half light he could see only himself reflected in her eyes. He didn't yet know what color they were in the light of a yellow binary star, and that saddened him for some reason. Saddened and yet excited him, made him long for the opportunity to find out. "Why me and not her?" he pressed, regardless.

She turned away again, began to circle the platform, one hand trailing along the stone walls, her movements wraithlike. "You have been a soldier, Mr. Harkness, yes?" she asked without asking.

He swallowed, didn't ask how she knew. "Yes," he answered quietly.

"You have... seen things, yes, and that perhaps is why you know so well what damage two years can do."

The words hit like a sharp stabbing pain in the chest, and he did not answer.

"Then we understand one another," she finished, coming around back to where he was standing, smiling at him, brightly, sweetly and sincerely. He did not trust that smile.

Fair enough, she had punished him for his inquisitiveness, but it was equally obvious that she needed this, was asking it of him on some subconscious level. "What is it that turned to dust?" he asked, hoarsely, painfully.

"A planet," she replied.

Jack didn't say anything, just looked at her, afraid and defiant in his fear. She stared back, intense and distant all at once, and then her eyebrows arched up and she smiled, brightly, incongruously. "Would you like to dance, Mr. Harkness?"

Jack swallowed. "Not really. Not right now."

"Why not?" she pouted, running her long fingers over his shoulders. He shivered. _Not like this._

"All right," he said eventually, "but not a tango."

"Not a tango," the Doctor agreed with surprising gentleness. "How about the rumba then?"

She took his hands, and then to Jack's relief placed one on her waist, put her own hand on his arm. They swayed, in the silence, in the dust, the only noise their muffled footsteps. She spun away from him with agonizing slowness, shifting her weight as she rotated, passing underneath his outstretched arm and away, until he could only feel her lightly on his fingertips. Then she came back, like a comet returning to orbit from the endless depths of space.

"Good night, Jack," she said when they had completed a full pattern. She kissed him, chastely, on the cheek, and then she was gone.

Jack stood alone in the dark and shivered- and he didn't know whether it was in fear or anticipation.  


* * *

In the morning all is bright and cheerful, Rose wearing a fetching little number in pink and the Doctor in a dusty velvet coat with coat-tails. "Come on," Rose tells him, taking his hands in hers, a grin illuminating her face, "they have the most delicious pastries on Barcelona but we have to get there early before the street vendors run out!"

"We have a time machine, don't we?" he inquires.

"Cheating," the Doctor informs him sonorously, and fastens a dark purple-green tie embroidered with multitudinous clock faces around her neck whilst gallantly holding the door open for everyone.

Jack thinks perhaps this is going to be fun.


End file.
